Tart Cherries – Improving recovery in endurance sport

It’s exciting stuff when you can read about awesome foods that can help you perform better and become more epic! Tart cherry juice- notably the Montmorency variety has had a growing number of studies devoted to it and I’m going to tell you how!

But how can it really help us!? Well it’s been shown to be most effective in two main areas; Recovery and Sleep. Tart cherry juice is high in polyphenols, in particular flavonoids and anthocyanins, which have high anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory properties and are high in melatonin.

Recovery –It’s been found that taking tart cherry juice will actually improve muscle force production and reduce muscle soreness post exercise compared with not taking it.

How to take for Recovery – Take 30ml concentrate mixed with water within 30mins after exercise.

Get inventive and take it with you post workout shake blending it with some frozen bananas and berries and some whey protein to ultimately boost your recovery!

Sleep – Due to the high amount of melatonin found in tart cherry juice it’s easy to see why it aids sleep as melatonin is critical to the cycles of deep sleep and studies have found that there were significant increases in time in bed, total sleep time and sleep efficiency with cherry juice supplementation.

How to take for improved sleep – Take 30ml concentrate with 250ml water 30mins before sleep

Where do I get it from? Healthspan Elite are the official suppliers of Team Sky, with batch tested products and their cherry juice concentrate is just what it says on the tin, 100% cherries.

Where it really shines! – Personally I think these cherries really shine when you’re doing a sportive or event that takes place over multiple days or after a really intense training session and recovery for the next day is paramount!

If you’re doing a multi-day event, I would recommend taking 30ml x2 a day for 4 days’ pre-event and on each of the race days following would be the most beneficial.

I wouldn’t take it just normally though as it may blunt mitochondrial adaption which is the foundation of improving your aerobic capacity